Nissan Motor Co’s sales were up 3 percent to 118,436, compared with estimates of 121,183.

Fiat Chrysler’s U.S. arm said it expects the auto industry to report annualized sales of 16.5 million vehicles for February, which includes about medium and heavy trucks. This would widely miss estimates.

The 48 economists polled by Thomson Reuters, on average, expected U.S. February auto sales of 16.7 million vehicles on an annualized basis, not including medium and heavy trucks, which each year account for up to 400,000 of sales.

Domestic luxury brands took a beating in February, with GM’s Cadillac down 13 percent and Ford’s Lincoln off 7 percent. Also hurting were sales of electrified vehicles, with the Chevrolet Volt hybrid sliding 43 percent and the Nissan Leaf down 16 percent.

Trucks continued to show strength, with still-low fuel prices partly offsetting the effects of bad weather.

After Indonesia retreat, GM retrenches in Thailand too

A day after announcing it is to stop making GM-branded cars in Indonesia, General Motors GM said Friday it would cease production of its Chevrolet Sonic in Thailand by the middle of this year.

While GM will still sell cars like the Cruze sedan in parts of Southeast Asia, an emerging markets battleground for global automakers, it is shifting focus to push the ‘American heritage’ of its SUVs and pickups such as the Trailblazer and Colorado.

The restructuring – under Executive Vice President Stefan Jacoby, who oversees markets beyond the Americas, Europe and China – marks a retrenchment in Asia by the U.S. automaker. While business grows in China, the world’s biggest autos market, GM has struggled in other parts of its international operations unit, which doesn’t include China.

The Detroit-based automaker has signalled overall restructuring charges of about $700 million this year, and said last month it expected an improved consolidated operating performance from Jacoby’s International Operations unit.

GM’s Thai plant in Rayong, an industrial city southeast of Bangkok, will be scaled down from current annual capacity of 180,000 vehicles. The company did not elaborate, but said it would initiate a “voluntary separation program” for staff. In total, GM employs around 3,200 people in Thailand.

In Indonesia, GM said on Thursday it would cease production of the Chevrolet Spin by end-June and shutter a factory at Bekasi, just outside Jakarta, which employs around 500 people.

After eight decades in Indonesia, GM’s market share is below 1%, according to LMC Automotive. It sold fewer than 11,000 vehicles there last year, while Toyota Motor TOYOF and its Daihatsu DHTMF affiliate shifted more than 578,000 vehicles. Toyota and other Japanese makers together control more than 90% of the Indonesian market.

Jacoby acknowledged GM got it wrong in going head-to-head with the Japanese in a market he dubs their “backyard”. The Spin, a strategic, small “people mover” van that has done well in Brazil, was too costly to make to be profitable in Indonesia as most of the parts had to be imported.

“We could not ramp up Spin production to boost the volume as we had expected … although the product was really good,” Jacoby told Reuters. “The logistics chain of the Spin was too complex; we had low volume so we could not localize the car accordingly, and from the cost point of view we were just not competitive.”

In Thailand, GM sold close to 26,000 vehicles last year, giving it 3% market share, according to LMC Automotive, which puts the combined market share of major Japanese rivals at more than 60%. GM said it will phase out sales of the Spin and the Sonic in Thailand by June.

While GM is broadly repositioning the Chevrolet brand in parts of Southeast Asia, it is driving into Indonesia with its Chinese partners, including SAIC Motor Corp. They plan to set up a manufacturing facility near Jakarta for their no-frills Wuling brand, but aren’t interested in taking over GM’s Bekasi plant, a person close to the joint venture said.

The overhaul in Indonesia and Thailand follows GM’s 2013 retreat from car production in Australia, and industry analysts now expect GM to restructure its manufacturing operations in South Korea, a big production hub for the U.S. firm.

Susquehanna Financial Group analyst Matthew Stover said South Korea has shifted from a developing-market cost structure over the last decade to being almost as expensive for car production as Japan.

“I don’t think what’s happening in Korea is even close to (being) done. It’s the biggest problem,” Stover said.

Why Buffett and Soros are buying into GM now

Two of the world’s savviest investors, Warren Buffett and George Soros, have increased their already substantial holdings of General Motors Co. GM stock, a sign that smart money has decided its shares are undervalued.

Earlier this month, Harry Wilson, the representative of four investment funds holding around 2% of GM common stock, announced the funds want the automaker to buy back $8 billion worth of stock and appoint him to its board of directors. Wilson, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal, said GM must be “more attentive to its cash balance and its operating performance” and address “shareholder frustration.”

The moves by Buffett and Soros were disclosed in filings reflecting increased holdings of GM shares in the fourth quarter of last year, prior to Wilson’s public announcement. Neither has said anything critical of GM; Buffett earlier expressed support for GM management. Each of the men has also expressed interest in buying retail automobile dealerships in the U.S., Buffett having an agreement to acquire the privately owned Van Tuyl group.

Whether other major investors, and possible other so-called activist investors, decide to join forces to exert pressure on GM isn’t clear – but investors may be sniffing a potential opportunity at GM: Since early February, the automaker’s share price has moved up more than 12% in an overall market that has gained less than 4%.

Has GM management been successful in remaking the automaker after its 2009 bankruptcy? Evidently, some investors don’t think so, though GM insiders argue that Mary Barra, the chief executive, has made much progress. She’s now feeling Wall Street pressure to do more – and why not? As the cover story of the February 7 issue of The Economist argued persuasively, activist investors can be effective change agents, turbocharging underperforming public corporations to the benefit of shareholders.

Taconic Parties, Appaloosa Parties, HG Vora Parties and Hayman Parties, which own more than 2% of the automaker, want to be represented on GM’s board, Wilson said. They also want GM to initiate a big share buyback, which theoretically would make remaining shares more valuable.

So far, Buffett and Soros haven’t elaborated publicly about their increases in GM share holdings. Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway brk.a increased its holdings by one million shares to 41 million, roughly 2.5%. Soros Fund Management raised its position by 728,938 to 4.9 million shares, or less than 1%.

The Detroit-based automaker has a rich history contending with activists: Ross Perot in the mid-1980s. Kirk Kerkorian and Jerry York in 2006. Neither could get through the stubbornness of GM’s executives and directors determined to stay the course. Leading the charge this time is Wilson, 43, an investment banker representing the investment funds. He worked to restructure GM following its bankruptcy in 2009 while working for the U.S. Treasury.

Using publicly available information, The Economist noted that activist investors have mounted campaigns at about 15% of the firms in the S&P 500 index since 2009, demanding board seats, strategy changes and the ouster of executives. Among them: Nelson Peltz at Pepsi. Bill Ackman at Canadian Pacific Railways and Burger King. Carl Icahn at Apple and eBay. Their effectiveness can be debated. In some cases, companies undertook suggested changes, saying they intended to do so anyway. In others, company performance improved, relieving the pressure.

Dissident and activist shareholders once were seen as opportunists, gambling on a payoff—“greenmail”—or a short-term improvement of share price. The rise of private equity investors represented a different form of activism in which the entire company was bought at a premium, loaded with debt and then restructured. Today’s activist would say the focus is longer-term performance.

With one eye on the activists, corporate boards monitor dividend and stock performance carefully and take steps, lest shareholders grow restive. But shareholders increasingly are large mutual and other funds rather than individuals. Funds tend to sell their stakes when performance lags or avoid sleepy companies altogether.

No one can question the disappointing performance of GM’s stock since the public offering in late 2010, or the simmering political controversy over the $10 billion it cost the U.S. to bail out the automaker. GM’s recent signal that it intends to raise the dividend relates directly to the flat share price.

But GM senior executives also assert the post-bankruptcy automaker is a leaner, more nimble performer – albeit one that tripped badly in 2014: The ignition-switch safety recalls and reparations have cost multiple billions that might otherwise have been realized as profits. Perhaps sensing investor impatience, GM indicated it intends to raise its quarterly cash dividend.

Alan Batey, president of GM North America, is a native of Great Britain who started with the company 35 years ago.

“We’ve played a lot of defense in the last year,” Batey said in an interview earlier this month at the Chicago Auto Show, referring to the recalls of tens of millions of GM vehicles. “We’ll never forget what our dealers have done to help us. They’ve been through hell and back. We’re indebted to them, and this year we’ll play offense.”

The annealing qualities of GM’s crises may make its management team tougher and more determined than ever to succeed. If not, a board seat and share buyback may turn out to an opening salvo in a longer, broader conflict over the automaker’s performance.

In luxury car sales, status counts, and the rich get richer

In the barbell economy, it is the extremes that thrive: Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods; In-N-Out Burger and Shake Shack; G-Shock and Rolex. So it is not surprising that in the seven-year sales surge of U.S. cars, the success of popular-priced brands like Subaru and Jeep should be balanced by a compensating rise in premium and luxury brands.

Top-shelf brands, with cars generally selling for more than $40,000, represent a big and growing slice of the car business. They now account for 11% of total new car sales, when measured by number of units sold. Count the dollars spent, and their presence grows even larger. Luxury cars account for 18% of all car sales revenue, worth $100 billion (figures courtesy of Edmunds.com).

Even those numbers understate the influence of premium brands on the U.S. car business. So lucrative is this market and so long are its product cycles (compared to volume brands) that you would think that the business was being conducted by gentlemen sipping sherry from their leather-covered chairs while attended by white-gloved servants.

Instead, the top brands scrap like schoolyard bullies, challenging each others’ sales results, shadowing their tactical moves, and practicing one-upmanship at every opportunity. Cataloguing the accounting tricks that go into manipulating year-end sales results – in search of a meaningless and potentially harmful designation as the most popular brand – is worth a column on its own.

What all this has led to is a clear pecking order among the premiere players that makes Downton Abbey look like a democracy. Veteran analyst Tom Libby of IHS Automotive divides the luxury players into three tiers. First, there are the leaders, long-established and nearly inviolable: BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Lexus. Then there are the strivers, those that are newer, smaller, and less prestigious: Cadillac GM, Audi, Acura, Infiniti and Lincoln F. Finally come the niche brands: Volvo, Land Rover, Porsche, Jaguar, Tesla and Maserati.

Libby sees the share of the overall market commanded by these manufacturers as relatively stable. But beneath the surface, there is immense churning. The three leaders joust among themselves to get an advantage, however temporary, while the strivers fight for admission to the top tier. The smaller players, meanwhile, search for ways to expand their franchises with new products outside their traditional segments Three recent examples: Jaguar’s coming crossover, Porsche’s work with hybrid powertrains, and Tesla’s much-delayed SUV.

Among the top players, BMW is seen as the most vulnerable. In January, it lost its position as the best-selling worldwide luxury brand to its two German competitors, due to an aging product line and struggles in China. “This looks like a pretty significant decline in growth compared to Mercedes and Audi,” said Juergen Pieper, a Frankfurt-based analyst with Bankhaus Metzler quoted by Bloomberg. “I think this will continue during the next few months.” Both Mercedes and Audi have declared their intentions to become the global luxury sales leader by 2020, which could force smaller BMW out of the top tier.

In the U.S., BMW’s competitors have accused of it being volume-oriented and using a heavy hand in marketing incentives to keep sales perking. Their suspicions seem to be born out by recent events. In reclaiming its U.S. luxury sales title from Mercedes-Benz last year, BMW hiked incentives and outspent Mercedes by more than $670 per vehicle. “It seems like that extra boost of incentive spending in December gave them the additional units to pass Benz,” said Jesse Toprak, chief analyst for Cars.com, quoted in Automotive News.

Mercedes knows how to play this game too and also raised its incentives, but at $433 per car, the increase paled in comparison to BMW’s $1,198. Mercedes has looked better lately with successes at both ends of the price spectrum. Its new CLA, whose prices start at $31,500, has been effectively attracting buyers from non-luxury makes. Meanwhile, Mercedes’ S-class has solidified Benz’s position at the top of the market by attracting more customers from its direct competitors.

The sole non-German brand in the U.S. top tier is Lexus, which is also trying to strengthen its standing. After a dearth of new product, it plans to introduce nine new or refreshed models this year. It could use some product-line diversity: One-third of Lexus sales come from a single model, the RX350 crossover. It also needs to raise its average transaction prices to be seen as an established player. At around $48,000, the average Lexus sells for $10,000 less than the average Mercedes.

The fighting is even more intense in the second tier. Audi recently claimed global sales leadership for the month of January, but its U.S. operation is still catching up with the rest of the world. While Audi expects a sixth year of record U.S. sales in 2015, it still sells only about half as many cars as Mercedes or BMW: 182,011 last year. It seems resigned to third-place status. It has set a sales target of 200,000 for 2018 but its long-term goal is only 300,000.

Audi can claim one big victory in 2014: it outsold Cadillac. Life has been difficult for Cadillac lately as it struggles to make the leap from premium – expensive cars – to the luxury category – cars whose valuable brand command an extra margin. Cadillac raised prices last year in an effort to look more exclusive, then was forced to bet a hasty retreat when customers stayed away. At the end of January, a Reuters analysis revealed that Cadillac was sitting on a four-month supply of unsold CTS sedans and six months worth of ATS sedans. Strangely, while its newer passenger cars languish, Cadillac can’t keep up with demand for the old-style Escalade SUV, some highly optioned versions of which, Reuters discovered, can carry prices in excess of $100,000.

The much-heralded revival of Lincoln has also failed to gather momentum. It claimed the title of fastest growing upmarket brand in 2015, bit it did so by adding a new model, the compact crossover MKC, to its lineup. Subtract 13,077 MKC sales from Lincoln’s year-end total, the equivalent of calculating same-store sales for a retailer, and Lincoln actually recorded a slight decline in sales of its older models.

“Both Cadillac and Lincoln have quite a trek ahead of them in recapturing sales from import shoppers,” says Edmunds.com analyst Jeremy Acevedo. “However, they’ve already taken the most important first steps.” Acevedo is high on the redesigned Lincoln MKX midsize crossover and all-new Cadillac CT6, a rear-drive full-size sedan.

We’ll see. Lincoln has only recently aspired to world-class status, but Cadillac is now in the 15th year of its push. The gap between the top tier and the also-rans is a yawning one, and may be a too broad to bridge for these particular players.

It’s official: 2014 was a year of record auto recalls

There are records that automakers want to set, and records they probably dread setting. Last year, the auto industry got one of the latter.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said more than twice as many vehicles were recalled in 2014 than the previous record of 30.8 million in 2004.

A few very high profile recalls led the record-setting year, including the General Motors GM ignition switch scandal and the ongoing recall of Takata airbags. The recall bug also hit Ford F and other automakers.

While recalls certainly are bad for a company’s bottom line, the spate of recalls certainly didn’t seem to dent sales much.

Last year sales reached around 16.5 million units, the biggest number of cars sold since before the recession, and early indicators show more growth this year.

GM’s recall of 2.6 million cars beginning in February 2014 to replace faulty ignition switches put the company under a harsh spotlight and may have prompted other automakers to be more vigilant about recalls.

Several investigations of GM, including the company’s own, concluded the automaker should have recalled the cars years before. At least 52 people have died in accidents after the ignition switch unexpectedly turned off the engine, disabling the air bags, power steering and power brakes.

Why female CEOs are staying quiet on activist investors

That’s the question that media pundits and experts alike are abuzz with as six prominent female CEOs fend off bids from aggressive activist investors. Most recently, GM CEO Mary Barra is feeling pressure from an activist who is trying to get on her board. She joins Pepsi’s Indra Nooyi, Yahoo’s Marissa Mayer, DuPont’s Ellen Kullman, Mondelez’s Irene Rosenfeld and HP’s Meg Whitman who are also under pressure from the likes of activists.

With only 25 female CEOs in the Fortune 500, it’s hard not to pause and question if gender targeting is really going on. But rather than join the discussion on whether or not they think these activists are targeting them on gender grounds, all the executives are staying quiet. None of the women have come out publicly on the issue and all of them either denied Fortune’s request for comment or didn’t respond immediately. Why?

Call it good common sense. Becoming the “poster child” for any issue — gender aside — when your company is under pressure to perform is the last thing any CEO should do, a group of experts told Fortune. Commenting publicly on the issue would not only put these women in a position of weakness, but could encourage activist investors to see their gender as a barrier to them being an effective leader.

“Chief executives are interested in maintaining both their power and reputation,” said Davia Temin, the founder of Temin & Co., a crisis-management firm. “There would be no benefit in acknowledging your gender. In fact, a lot of detriment could come of that. A female CEO doesn’t need to remind anyone else that she is a woman seeking the very same leadership goals as a man.”

It’s true that activists investors could likely see women as softer targets for a takeover because of their gender — even if it’s unconscious, said Melody Kimmel, a senior vice president and director of communication training at FleishmanHillard. But responding would only make the CEOs seem defensive, she said, adding that there is no upside to speaking about an issue that draws attention to the activist pressure in any way.

“All CEOs have to be strategic about the causes they pick up and if makes sense for their business to do so,” she said. “They need to be the face and the voice of the company, not the poster child for whatever issue, in this case gender.”

In fact, for Allan Chernoff, the owner of Chernoff Communications, the issue doesn’t relate to gender at all. From an investor standpoint, it doesn’t make sense for any CEO to comment publicly on any part of a bid from an activist investor. Equating coming forward to defend themselves to a CEO “pouring honey on them to attract the bees,” Chernoff said activists are already distracting to management and this would only provoke them to continue to pester.

While all the communication experts agreed that the CEOs themselves should not address the issue, Paul Argenti, a professor of corporate communication at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, said he was surprised that another female CEO at a strongly performing company hasn’t “come to their defense.”

“I am surprised that no female leaders are talking about it at all,” he said. “Standing up and pointing the finger to say something wrong is going on could be played to their advantage. It would show a lot of courage, which is an important trait for a leader.”

Fortune’s Pattie Sellers started the discussion last month by pointing out Nelson Peltz has targeted three female CEOs in the Fortune 500. Then Andrew Ross Sorkin of the New York Times questioned earlier this week whether or not gender really plays a factor in the recent activist trend. Yet for Chernoff and others, it’s clear that to some degree, these female leaders are being singled out because of their minority status as CEOs. That doesn’t mean they should acknowledge it — however.

“Of course, there is gender bias, but these are very smart capable women and like smart male CEOs, they don’t want to play the activist investors game. Certainly on the public stage,” said Chernoff.

Big automakers are putting the brakes on Super Bowl ads

When the Super Bowl kicks off later this week there will be — as always — plenty of viewers tuning in just for the commercials. There’s one industry they’ll see less represented than in previous years, though: automotive.

Last year’s game saw record spending by car companies, but this year, with sales rising, they’re backing away from the game, preferring to spend their marketing dollars elsewhere. In fact, it’s possible that for the first time no North American auto manufacturer will have a spot at Super Bowl XLIX, and only a small number are expected to advertise during this year’s big game — the fewest number since 2010, according to a report.

Car ads make up some of the most memorable spots during the big game — think of last year’s Chevrolet Silverado ad from General Motors GM or the Ford F Fusion Hybrid ad featuring James Franco and Rob Riggle, which also debuted last year. For the 2015 game between the New England Patriots and the Seattle Seahawks, though, neither of those companies will be running an ad during the breaks in the action.

Other car manufacturers will be sitting on the bench, including Audi, Volkswagen’s luxury brand. This will be the first time in seven years that Audi hasn’t taken part in the festivities, according to Automotive News. The trade publication also noted that a few car companies will be part of the Super Bowl ad game, though, with BMW, Kia, Lexus, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan and Toyota TM all confirming that they’d be running a commercial on Feb. 1.

GM will have an active presence at the game despite not running ads — GMC is the official car of the NFL, and the Super Bowl MVP will drive off in a Chevy Colorado pickup truck.

FCA, the automotive company that includes Chrysler, declined to say whether or not the automaker will be airing an ad on the night of the Super Bowl. A spokeswoman for the company said an announcement will only be made the weekend of the game. If Chrysler doesn’t end up running an ad, this would be the first time ever that no major North American car company has an ad during the big game, according to Peter Daboll, CEO at television and video ad company Ace Metrix.

A spokeswoman for GM said that the expense of a spot — said to be around $4 million for a single 30 second ad on NBC — combined with the fact that GM didn’t have a new product launch to focus on, led the company to pass on the Super Bowl this year.

Bob Dorfman, a sports marketing expert and executive creative director at Baker Street Advertising, said that with more diverse opportunities for mass advertising, some companies may be looking at other options with a less expensive price tag.

“You can spend [advertising dollars] in the college football playoffs, which sort of became a mini-Super Bowl,” he said.

Ford, for one, debuted commercials for the newly remodeled F-150 during the college football playoffs and other bowl games.

Another reason car companies may be easing back on Super Bowl ads? They just don’t need it, Dorfman said. The car business had a fantastic year last year, selling nearly 17 million cars and reaching heights it hadn’t seen since before the 2008 credit crisis. With sales naturally spiking right now, the $4 million is an unnecessary expense.

The dollars can instead be spent on other types of marketing: digital platforms, social media, and mobile marketing, he said.

There’s also the fact that advertisement schedules tend to be cyclical, noted Ace Metrix’s Daboll. Still, he said he was “honestly a little perplexed” when he saw that so many auto companies were choosing not to participate this year. Social media, and the ability to have ads repeat infinitely on the Internet, no matter what television program they run during, could make companies think twice about dropping the big check for a Super Bowl spot, he added.

GM open to working with Google on developing self-driving cars

General Motors is open to working with Google on developing self-driving car technology, the chief technology officer for the U.S. automaker said on Monday.

“I’m not in charge of deciding what we will and won’t do, but I’d say we’d certainly be open to having a discussion with them,” Jon Lauckner said in an interview at the Detroit auto show.

Lauckner made his comments two days before the head of Google’s self-driving car project, Chris Urmson, is scheduled to speak at a conference held annually in conjunction with the auto show. Urmson is expected to announce his company’s plans to seek partnerships within the auto industry.

Self-driving cars have been a hot topic for both companies in recent months. GM GM CEO Mary Barra made headlines in the fall when she said that some GM cars would have limited driverless tech, such as the ability to detect pedestrians, by 2017. She also announced that GM would be part of the team building 120 miles of so-called “autonomous” highway — roads with sensors that enable communication between cars — around Detroit.

And Google’s GOOG driverless car ambitions are well-known. Just last month, the Silicon Valley giant unveiled the first fully-functioning prototype of a driverless car. This model doesn’t really look like any car you’ve seen on the road, and certainly doesn’t look like something GM would produce — it looks more like something you’d see in a 1960s science fiction movie.

Combining these two perspectives and histories — GM’s ability to make cars that people actually want to buy with Google’s ability to innovate and push the technology envelope — could make a lot of sense in terms of ushering in the future of autonomous cars. Just how an arrangement might work, though, is a question.

“You have to figure out how would something like that actually work,” Lauckner said. “Would it be something where it would be an opportunity to work together in a joint development agreement?”

The vehicle, which may look significantly different than the model shown Monday morning at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit, will feature a 200-mile range and sell for about $30,000, she said. It’s also smaller than the compact Chevy Volt.

GM used the occasion to introduce a new generation Volt as well, which is a gas-electric hybrid, though the automaker calls it “an extended range electric.” The new Volt will be able to travel 50 miles on battery only and 400 miles when the range-extending gasoline engine kicks in to recharge the battery during longer trips.

She called the game a “real game changer” for the automaker. Bolt could be a serious competitor for Tesla Motors’ TSLA planned mass-market electric vehicle, as well as Nissan’s Leaf.

Of the Bolt, Barra said “it can be someone’s everyday car,” since it doesn’t require a gasoline engine or a recharge for a routine trip, answering so-called “range anxiety” on the part of motorists. For Barra, the chance to introduce new vehicle models represented more pleasant duty than last year, when she spent much time appearing frequently in public to explain massive recalls of defective GM vehicles, to apologize to families of those killed or maimed in accidents and to testify before Congress.

The Bolt doesn’t represent a technical breakthrough for GM, which will use the same lithium-ion battery chemistry in the new model as it does in the Volt. But it may signify a triumph of lighter materials and skillful packaging and design when it finally appears in 2017.

In 2014, consumers bought 57,379 electric vehicles of all kinds, a slim portion of the nearly 16.5 million new vehicles sold in the U.S. The electric-vehicle total was 22.8% higher than the previous year, mainly due to sales of the Leaf. Nissan sold 30,200 Leafs, a one-third increase from a year earlier.

GM’s Volt sales were 18,805 for the year, down 18.6%.

Two years from now the automotive landscape could look much different. If gasoline prices stay flat or continue to trend downward, consumers presumably might even be less interested than today in battery-powered and other alternative-fuel vehicles. Automakers, however, are facing regulatory hurdles such as in California, where electric cars count toward fulfillment of zero-emission requirements.

For now, companies like GM, Nissan and Tesla can only hope that consumers develop the same enthusiasm for electric vehicles as regulatory authorities.